Labor
Despite the South’s historic reticence to organize, the South has been a center of labor of all sorts. From farmers to factory workers, the South’s blue and green collar workforce is still going strong.
Pipeline workers walk picket line in Mississippi
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April 12, 2013
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
Brian Anderson said he and the other pipeline workers on the picket line in Columbia, Miss., have a simple message.
"We...
Southernomics as a model?
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April 1, 2013
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
A recent cover story for the Austin, Texas-based Progressive Populist, headlined "Southern Poverty Pimps," describes in detail...
Union health plans will suffer under Obamacare
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March 21, 2013
By James McGee, Labor Notes
"From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need": does this sound like a model for health care reform?
At a January...
Postal unions agitate to keep delivering the mail on time and on Saturday
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March 13, 2013
By Jamie Partridge, Labor Notes
The National Association of Letter Carriers is calling for a national day of action March 24 to save six-day delivery. Hundreds of actions, in...
What's needed for labor success in the South: Some Holiness fire!
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March 4, 2013
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
TOUGALOO, Miss. -- I'm a Catholic now, but I grew up in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. My grandfather was a Holiness preacher. I know about...
Climate change is drowning out 'jobs vs. environment' debate
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February 15, 2013
By Jenny Brown, Labor Notes
The old argument that unions must choose between jobs and the environment is losing its grip, as climate change becomes more evident and more urgent....
In Walmart and fast food, unions scaling up a strike-first strategy
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February 5, 2013
By Jenny Brown, Labor Notes
Small but highly publicized strikes by Walmart retail and warehouse workers last fall set the labor movement abuzz and gained new respect for...
Does UAW rally at Mississippi college signal revival of labor in the South?
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January 31, 2013
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
The gathering at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday night seemed more like an old-time revival meeting than a labor rally, but maybe that'...
Amid North Carolina anti-labor campaign, public workers score union win
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January 17, 2013
North Carolina is already the least-unionized state in the nation, with a union membership rate of only 2.9 percent and a ban on collective bargaining by public employees. And if...
An action-packed 2013 in store for Southern labor
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January 11, 2013
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
The year 2013 promises to be an action-packed one for labor in the South as well as across the country. Republicans lost major ground in the national...
Longshoremen shut down S.C. shipping terminal in protest over deadly fire at Bangladesh Walmart supplier
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December 20, 2012
By Kerry Taylor
Longshoremen shut down the Wando Welch Shipping Terminal at the Port of Charleston in South Carolina for nearly two hours today to protest the arrival of the...
Protest planned for S.C. port over shipment of clothes from deadly Bangladesh factory
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December 19, 2012
A picket is planned for Thursday, Dec. 20 at the Port of Charleston in South Carolina where garments made in the Bangladesh factory where over 100 workers died in a fire last...
Hostess workers take on private equity pirates
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December 18, 2012
By Eric Blair, Labor Notes
It was a depressingly familiar scenario. Decades of mismanagement had driven the maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread, and other Hostess treats into...
The racist roots of 'right to work' laws
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December 13, 2012
This week, Republican lawmakers in Michigan -- birthplace of the United Auto Workers and, more broadly, the U.S. labor movement -- shocked the nation by becoming the 24th state to...
Out of the Bangladesh tragedy may come global worker solidarity
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December 13, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
The horrible tragedy at the Tazreen garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, may become a milestone in the development of true global solidarity among...
With historic strikes underway and Black Friday protests planned, Walmart files complaint against union
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November 19, 2012
Walmart filed an unfair labor practice charge last week against the United Food and Commercial Workers union, asking the National Labor Relations Board to block efforts to disrupt...
Mississippi students see labor and civil rights as their social justice movement
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November 1, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
On the evening of March 18, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed striking sanitation workers in Memphis, and this is what he told them:
"All...
VOICES: Presidential politics vs. workers' rights
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October 24, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
Just a couple weeks to election day, and Americans will see how far Big Money can determine the political future of this nation.
The world has changed...
Standing up to the bully of Bentonville
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October 15, 2012
By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest
The spreading job actions by Wal-Mart workers around the country, while still involving modest numbers, come across as a kind of catharsis....
The world's retail Goliath notices its workers aren't happy
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October 10, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
The world's retail Goliath may be finally feeling some pain as a result of the growing number of slingshot-wielding Davids at its feet....
Chipotle fair-food agreement is the latest win for Florida farmworkers
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October 8, 2012
A six-year campaign for justice has ended with a big win for a Florida farmworkers' rights group.
Last week Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill signed an agreement with the...
Remembering a Southern labor legend
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September 27, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
Victor Bussie, longtime Louisiana labor leader and a legendary figure in the Southern labor movement, died at 92 a year ago this month in Baton Rouge,...
Preaching Koch Brothers gospel on public education
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September 17, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
Barack Obama, then still a U.S. senator from Illinois, said this back in 2006 about teachers, unions and education:
"If we're serious about...
VOICES: Union rights should be civil rights
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September 13, 2012
By Rick Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit, Labor Notes
After 60 years of labor law heavily tilted toward employers, it's time to rebalance the scales by making labor organizing a...
Poultry giant reports gains as workers protest conditions
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September 10, 2012
By Joe Atkins, Labor South
Sanderson Farms Inc., the same poultry giant where workers at its Hazelhurst, Miss., plant are protesting horrible working conditions, has just posted...
